Last year, the crafty competitor supermom part of me decided that our family should have the craziest and coolest vehicle at our elementary school’s Trunk-Or-Treat. I scavenged the recycle bins throughout my neighborhood on trash day and brought home an entire van full of cardboard, which my kids and I converted into HUGE Minecraft characters!
At first, I thought I could just paint these and call it good. Oh, how wrong I was. I did paint the Minecraft Jack-O-Lantern right in front there, and I think it came out just splendid. But it took me approximately nineteen years to finish painting eleventy billion pixelated orangeish squares, and I gave up on painting after it was finished. My husband created pixelated “skins” in Photoshop and we printed them all out, using probably an entire cartridge of printer ink. One long evening and a whole roll of packaging tape later, we had our characters finished. The ghast is my favorite – I sacrificed a pool noodle to make that little guy!
Here is our Trunk-Or-Treat display – sadly, the photos do it no justice whatsoever! My DJ hubby had a Minecraft-themed dance party projecting onto a sheet from inside the vehicle, along with tons of disco lights, strobes, and mirror ball. I heard “Whoaaaaa!” from pretty much every single kid and parent who approached us looking for candy! Best Trunk or Treat EVER.
Sometimes I am sad we didn’t keep our giant Minecraft characters around for the rest of the year. They could’ve appeared in our family photos at Christmastime or sat in the front seat for the car pool lane. But, no. We gave them away on Craigslist to a 10-year-old boy who was thrilled beyond belief to have these for his bedroom. His parents seemed less thrilled. The things we do for our kids!
Don’t be afraid to try and tackle something huge like this – get your kids involved and use what you have, and you can make something really spectacular that doesn’t cost you much money at all. The time you spend together is the icing on the cake!
Minecraft Creeper Pumpkins!